


Halloween

by Schweet



Category: Original Work, poem - Fandom
Genre: References to Depression, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:01:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27240865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schweet/pseuds/Schweet
Summary: I really don't like my body today





	Halloween

Once a year, the moon steps off the stage and the forgotten souls take the spotlight with empty veins already screaming

Once a year, the world is lit not by stars but by the drifting embers of dying torches held in skeleton hands

Once a year, it is dark and it is loud

Once a year, the monsters come knocking on my door

I do not hear the slamming of their clawed fists against the iron

But instead a gentle whisper welcoming me down from my tower and out into the town square

Once a year, the ghosts wail outside my mile high windows

I do not hear their moans and screams and rattling of chains

But instead a choir and cheers and cymbals

364 days a year, the cheap cobwebs your neighbour’s always wrap around their front porch pillars shroud my inner thighs, the edges of my breasts, and the fat of my arms

364 days a year, the cobwebs stretch with each movement I make and shrink back into place, but never quite the same as the day before

364 days a year, with each movement they are spread more and more thin until all I am is sagging skin and angry shoulder pimples

364 days a year, the caramel of red apples on cheap sticks glaze my smile until the image of my too-wide mouth, showing more gum than the magazines advertise, sticks in the caverns of your molars and not even a dentist’s cruel weapons could pull the gunk of that image out

364 days a year, the jack-o-lantern that was never lit and still sits on your porch in January rests beneath my creaking ribcage and upon my popping hips

364 days a year, my forgotten candle sits in a puddle of stagnant rainwater crisscrossed with the rotting ribbons of pumpkin flesh

364 days a year, the sides of my body curl inwards under the weight of their weakening foundations until all I am is the abandoned remnants of a tattered body on the stoop of your front door

364 days a year, the magical red warts of a teenage witch who can never stir her potion in the right direction coat my All Hallow’s Eve skin like ash from a bonfire burning poisoned candy

364 days a year, the flapping of the wings of a vampiric horde spill from my lips coated in bat droppings

364 days a year, white fungus winds its way up my nostrils and into my wheezing lungs

364 days a year, the white nose of a dying species is all that I am

Once a year, I do not fear the dark because only then can I not see my body

Once a year, I do not fear the noise because only then can I not hear my body

Once a year, I cannot see all that Halloween has done to me


End file.
